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Due to the different rulers throughout the years and the human structure of the Jews in Galicia and Bukovina their history is complex. This section offers short descriptions on some of the main Jewish communities in the region throughout the years. You can also read short definitions of Jewish things related to the heritage of Galician end Bukovinian Jewries.

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Galicia and Bukovina are two adjacent regions, located on the northern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains. Today the area is divided between independent Ukraine, Poland and Romania.

The name Galicia is derived from “Halicz,” the name of a town which was the center of the medieval Halych-Volynian principality, initially a part of Kievan Rus'. In the 1340s, the largest part of the Halych principality was a part of the Polish Kingdom. In 1772, after the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Galicia was annexed from Poland and became Austrian Crown land, under the name "The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria." The area of Malopolska, around Krakow, was incorporated into Austria as a result of the third partition of Poland, but was then transferred to the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw in 1809. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the town of Krakow and a small surrounding area was made an independent republic under the protection of the three partitioning powers (Austria, Prussia and Russia). Following the outbreak of revolution in 1846, the area was annexed by Austria and incorporated into Galicia.

In 1918, Galicia was reclaimed by the independent Polish Republic, although a short-lived Western-Ukrainian People's Republic existed in Eastern Galicia in 1918-19. In 1939, Eastern Galicia was annexed by the Soviet Union and became a part of Soviet Ukraine. Since 1991 this area has belonged to the Independent Republic of Ukraine.

The rivers San, Dniester, Seret and Prut flow through the region. The capital of the area is Lviv (Lemberg, Lwόw). Other major cities are Brody and Tarnopol in the west, Ivano-Frankivsk (Stanislawow) in the south and Krakow in Western Galicia. The Jewish population in the area grew rapidly over the long 19th century, from 178,000 in 1772 to 811,000 in 1900.

Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the Carpathians and is currently divided between Romania and Ukraine. It is first mentioned in 1388 as part of the Principality of Moldavia. Bukovina’s name is derived from the Ukrainian word for 'Beech tree,' a plant distinct in the landscape of the region. Bukovina was occupied by the Austrian Empire in 1774, and in 1787 was incorporated into "The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria." In 1849 it became a separate Austrian 'Crown Land' – the Duchy of Bukovina, with Czernowitz (now Chernovtsy) as its capital. After World War I Romania took control of the region. In 1940, the northern half of Bukovina was annexed by the Soviet Union. Today, Northern Bukovina is a part of Ukraine and Southern Bukovina is a part of Romania.

Jews have lived in Bukovina since the 14th Century. During World War II most of Bukovina’s Jews were deported to Transnistria and many did not return.

The Geo-Political history of Galicia and Bukovina has left us with many maps of the area in many different languages, the wide variety of which demonstrates different methods of map-making. The earliest maps of the region we were able to obtain go back as far as the 14th century.. Some of the maps in the database depict the entire region, while others focus on smaller areas and cities.

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You can search the map database by the title of the map or by the name of community. The title of each map describes the area depicted and the year in which the map was drawn. For example: Galicia – 1847

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Communities

Jews started settling in Galicia and Bukovina in the 12th century, and the Jewish population of these regions reached close to one million on the eve of the Holocaust. Most of the Jews of these regions lived in small towns (Shtetlekh in Yiddish), and in some of these they constituted a majority of the population. At the beginning of the 20th century a significant proportion of the regions’ Jews lived in the countryside – according to some estimates, up to 36.6 %.

Due to the particular political and social conditions of the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom, Jewish self-government institutions in the area reached a height of their development, and were fully and organically integrated in the corporative fabric of the feudal country. The Jewish population, in fact, embodied a separate medieval corporation which was, economically and socially, an intrinsic part of Polish society. The rights, social standing and relationships of this population with the central government were mandated by special legislation – the privilegia or charters – which the Jews were granted by the rulers of Poland and Lithuania. The needs of the Jewish communities and their representation before the government were handled by autonomous bodies – the Kehalim – and their various institutions. During the period following the divisions of Poland, under Austrian rule, the Jewish autonomous institutions lost their corporative jurisdiction and dealt mainly with religious, educational and welfare issues. Despite this loss of autonomy, the Jewish communities of Galicia and Bukovina – like those of Poland in general – managed to preserve their position as influential social organizations and their unique organizational, cultural and social characteristics.

The community database offers detailed information about 498 communities in Galicia and Bukovina, with many more being worked on.

For those interested in genealogical research, this is a good place to start. Users can filter the community database by community or by the list of administrative districts, if they do not know the name of the specific community.

Many places have more than one way of spelling. To view different variations click here.

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Tombstones

In many places in Galicia and Bukovina, the Jewish cemeteries are the only material remnants of the Jewish community. Some of the cemeteries and tombstones date back to the 16th century.

Cemeteries and burial ceremonies had an important place in the religious life and cultural experience of the Jews of Eastern Europe, and great effort was therefore expended on commemorating the departed through the unique language of tombstone art. Many of these tombstones have significant artistic value, and give us a unique window into the inner life of many generations of Jews, their beliefs and the opinions and the world views of the surrounding cultures.

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Galicia and Bukovina were the home to some of the most influential Jews in arts, literature, and academics. The notable people collection offers a brief view to their great contribution to Jewish heritage and world culture.

We offer a collection of interviews with local Jews and Ukrainians which shed light on Jewish past of Galicia and Bukovina. Most of the interviews are in Ukrainian and are available in audio and written formats.

Jewish Galicia and Bukovina Bibliography project

The JGB annotated bibliography project is a joint venture of JGB Organization and Ludmer International Project on the Jewish Heritage of Galicia and Bukovina at the University of Haifa. It covers about 200 years of literature on Galician and Bukovinian Jewry. It documents a wide range of works that relate, in whole or in part, to history and legacy of these Diaspora communities and their prominent figures, especially from the period of Austrian annexation (1772) until the outbreak of World War II (1939).

To date, thousands of essays, books, book chapters, pamphlets, and articles, from numerous publications, in some ten languages have been collected. The detailed catalogue of the items provides researchers, students, and the general public with quick access to large reservoir of knowledge about the Galician and Bukovinian Jewry, much of which has not been accessible through existing databases.See more.

Until now, some 1000 items are already uploaded to the site. You may find much more in the pdf file of annotated (in Hebrew) bibliography.

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Field School 2009 to Solotvin

A view of the Solotvin cemetery from far

General view of the Solotvin cemetery

The field school in Ivano-Frankivsk (August 10-28, 2009) was a joint venture organized by the Jewish History in Galicia and Bukovina project and the Moscow Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization Sefer. Thiry-nine undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate students affiliated with the Sefer Center spent three weeks in Ivano-Frankivsk and the vicinity under the direction of seven researchers, studying Jewish history and examining Jewish material culture in the region.

A group of sixteen participants led by Dr. Boris Khaimovich from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Marina Bruk from the State University of St. Petersburg undertook the task of documenting the Jewish cemetery in Solotvyn in its entirety. About 2,000 tombstones were numbered, photographed and their epitaphs were transcribed. The work included cleaning the tombstones from the high grass and rubble, sometimes digging out complete slabs. A detailed map of the cemetery was prepared by local land-surveyors. This is the first time that a complete Jewish cemetery was documented in the former Soviet Union. This project shows the continuity of the community from the late seventeenth century up to the Holocaust, and even up to 1997 when the last burial was performed there. Currently we are entering the epitaphs into a computer database in order to upload them to the project's website. This material will be accompanied by English translations and photographs.

Working in Solotvin cemetery

A group of fifteen participants led by Prof. Olga Belova from the Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Dr. Maria Kaspina from the Russian State University of the Humanities in Moscow collected oral histories and ethnographic testimonies from local residents. They worked in Solotvyn, Bohorodchany, Nadvirna and the neighboring village of Maniava. Solotvyn turned out to be an ideal place for ethnographic research because there were no large migrations of non-Jews from the town and it preserved its original population. Therefore, older residents remember the pre-war Jewish community and many of its members as well as Jewish customs and the nature of Jewish-Gentile relations. In Bohorodchany and Nadvirna, the number of long-term residents is relatively low due to the influx of people from other places. The one-day visit to Maniava provided an excellent example of a Ukrainian village where only five Jewish families lived before the Holocaust. The older inhabitants of Maniava remember individual Jews but they had little knowledge of Jewish communal life. In addition, members of the ethnographic group visited the towns of Bilshivtsi, Dolina, Horodenka, Kalush, Otyniia, and Tlumach where they collected oral history testimonies from local residents.

The group also conducted interviews with Jews in Ivano-Frankivsk. Although there are no Jewish people there who remember that city before the war, the group collected interesting material from older Jews who came from neighboring regions. Several of the interviews were conducted in Yiddish.

All in all, the group collected 129 interviews, with a total length of 78 hours. 10 hours of interviews were filmed. The majority of the interviews are already transcribed and will soon appear on the website in their original language.

The oral history testimonies collected during the expedition provide us with a unique insight into Jewish culture and life in the years preceding World War II and during the Holocaust. The ethnographic material gathered in the Ivano-Frankivsk region also filled an important gap in the research on Slavic perceptions of Jews and popular views of Jewish customs and rituals.

A group of eight participants led by Hillel Kazovsky from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr. Volodymyr Lyubchenko from the Institute of History of Ukraine of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev conducted archival and library research in the area. In the library of the State Archives of the Ivano-Frankivsk Region they examined thirty-two local newspapers in order to find information on Jewish life in the area before World War II.

After reviewing the newspapers the group turned to archival materials. Upon the request of our partner organization, the Central Archives of the History of Jewish People in Jerusalem, the group examined material in the collections stored in the State Archives of the Ivano-Frankivsk Region in order to identify Jewish materials and prepare lists for copying.

A member of this group visited the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Library and copied rare books about towns and villages of the region. These books, mostly written by the amateur historians, were published locally in small numbers and are not easily available in other places. Most of them do not mention Jews but contain essential information about the communities and their history. Twelve books were photographed (891 frames total) and this work has to be continued.

The Rabbi of the Ivano-Frankivsk region Moshe-Leib Kolesnik generously put his personal archives at the disposal of the Field School. A member of the group scanned seventeen large files from Rabbi Kolesnik's archives, which include 927 documents. All collected materials have been uploaded into the project website.

In addition to the above mentioned activities, Dr. Vladimir Levin of the Hebrew University accompanied members of the ethnographic group as it visited nineteen towns in the Ivano-Frankivsk region (Bilshivtsi, Bolekhiv, Broshniv-Osada, Burshtyn, Dolina, Halych, Horodenka, Ezupil, Kalush, Kolomyia, Kosiv, Otyniia, Pereginsk, Pistyn, Rohatyn, Rozhniativ, Tlumach, Tysmenytsia, Yabluniv) in order to survey remnants of Jewish material culture there. During these visits, Dr. Levin also evaluated the possibility of expanding the project's research to include these communities.

The educational part of the field school consisted of three tours and a series of lectures. The first tour of Ivano-Frankivsk was led by a specialist in the history and architecture of the city, Zhanna Komar. During the second educational tour the students visited the town of Halych, after which the region of Galicia was named, and the city of Lviv, the historic capital of Galicia. Miroslav Voloschuk from the Vasyl Stefanyk Pre-Carpathian National University in Ivano-Frankivsk guided the group in Halych, and Igor Smolsky of the State Historical Archives in Lviv led the tour through the old city of Lviv. The third educational tour included visiting Bolekhiv, where Dr. Khaimovich guided the group through the synagogue and the cemetery. The group also visited Stryi, where they viewed the ruins of the Great Synagogue, and Drohobych, where Igor Smolsky guided us through the city center.

Prof. Oleg Zhernokleev of the Pre-Carpathian University in Ivano-Frankivsk, Dr. Victoria Mochalova from the Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Prof. Belova, Dr. Kaspina, Dr. Lyubchenko, Mr. Kazovsky, Dr. Khaimovich and Matvey (Motl) Gordon from St. Petersburg gave lectures about Galicia, its Jews and their culture. Dr. Tatyana Velichko from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences also gave a lecture on Ukrainian ethnography for the ethnographic group. Dr. Khaimovich guided the members of the archival and ethnographic groups through the Solotvyn cemetery.

The three-week field school was generously supported by the Avi Chai FSU Foundation, the Genesis Foundation and the Ludmer Project. We are also grateful to the Ivano-Frankivsk Jewish Community, including Rabbi Moshe-Leib Kolesnik and Director Igor Perelman, for their assistance.

Lysiec - General information

Lysiec was mentioned in the written sources as early as 1491 when it was a village in private possession (Istoriia mist, 239; Pinkas Hakehilot, 301). In 1652, it became a part of the regional defense system against Tatar invasions. A Roman-Catholic church was established by the village's owner Andrej Potocki in 1669 (Słownik, 5:860). An Armenian community also existed in the village; and a stone Armenian Catholic church was consecrated in 1854 (Słownik, 5:860).

In 1880, there were 2,359 residents in Lysiec, of them 254 Roman-Catholics (mostly Poles) and 1,100 Greek-Catholics (mostly Ukrainians). The remaining population included 983 Jews and 22 Armenian Catholics (Słownik, 5:860). According to the census of 1900, there were 1,095 Jews in Lysiec which composed 44% of the total population of 2,512 (Pinkas Hakehilot, 301).

During the Russian military occupation of 1914-1915 Lysiec was almost destroyed. This led to a dramatic reduction in the local population and especially in the Jewish community. In 1921, the census counted only 275 Jews, 18% of the population of 1,560 people (Pinkas Hakehilot, 301).

Lysiec - Jews in the 18th century

The Jewish population first appears in Lysiec in the eighteenth century. The Polish census of 1764 gives some information about it (Stampfer, 124). The community (kahal) included 171 Jews of both genders and 16 infants under the age of one year. 116 Jews with 10 infants lived in the town of Lysiec itself, while the rest (55) were dispersed in the surrounding villages according to the following breakdown:

Iwanikówka - 7

Posiecz - 6

Radna - 6

Drohomirczany - 8 (and one infant)

Łysiec Stary - 5 (and one infant)

Stebnik - 2 (and two infants)

Czerniejów - 14 (and one infant)

Chryplin - 3 (and one infant)

Chomików - 4 (and one infant)

The Lysiec Jewish community was one of the smallest in the Kołomyia powiat. Only Kamionki Wielkie (56) and Kułaczkowce (150) had smaller Jewish populations.

Definition: Census of 1764

Author:

V. Levin

The census was organized after the dissolution of the Council (Vaad) of the Four Lands in order to find out the real number of Jews in the Commonwealth, in particular those who were obliged to pay a head tax (after the age of one year).

Definition: Kahal

Author:

V. Levin

Kahal - The Jewish community in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which was autonomous in its internal affairs. It had compulsory power on all Jews in a town as well as on the Jews living in the villages in its vicinity.